Oct 18, 1999

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Mandate 99

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Not Bad
The "bad boys" ain't so bad after all. Mumbai rockers Pentagram (Pappal, Clyde, Randolph, Vishal, Shiraz) have been featured on the website of Rolling Stone magazine, the bible of music lovers worldwide. Same guys had irked the Shiv Sena with their bawdy lyrics at a concert last year. What got them noticed this time is their number on the Kargil conflict, The price of bullets. The song, says the write-up on rollingstone.com, "displays anger at the fact that nations can still resort to the barbaric practices of war to resolve conflict". Says Vishal: "We just wanted to ask why people must suffer for someone else's mistakes." Good question.

Win Win Winnie

When it comes to recovering from a faux pas, Winnie Mandela's the tops. On a trip to Kerala last week, Nelson Mandela's ex-wife was delivering a fiery discourse on Gandhi at the Children's Cultural Festival. Halfway through, her secretary rushed up to inform her that it was the wrong speech -- intended for a Gandhi Jayanti function the next day. After some moments of stunned silence, she soldiered on, "What I meant to say was that you children have a lot to learn from (Gandhi) ..." She returned to full form later at a banquet, surprising CM E.K. Nayanar with a bear hug. "We're bosom comrades," he explained to onlookers. Literally, huh?

Shorts Story
You thought she couldn't act. Looks like Shyam Benegal disagrees. The high-powered director has cast starlet Meghna in his film Hari Bhari. Remember the skimpily clad heroine of Feroz Khan's flop film Prem Aggan last year? Then Meghna Kothari, now minus the surname, she says: "The image of a Feroz Khan heroine is of a sexy dame, something I can't carry off." So it's on to Benegal's Shabana Azmi-Nandita Das starrer. Away with the shorts and bustiers ... for now.

Blame it on Tabu
Bhopal spells bad luck for Tabu. furious fans burnt an effigy of the actress when she didn't attend a function held in her honour during a visit to the city last week. They insist she'd agreed to be there, no comments from her. Last year too there was a furore when, during the shooting of Hu Tu Tu, she made a comment on the manners of local citizens. "I love Bhopal and its people," she told reporters last week at the airport. "I can't understand why some people are annoyed with me." The price of stardom, we guess.

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